Gov. Daniels finally decided to pull the plug on the State’s privatization contract with IBM/ACS to provide welfare eligibility services.
“It wasn’t resources,” Daniels said. “It wasn’t effort. It was a flawed concept that simply did not work out in practice.”
But, in Daniels’ defense, it’s not like anyone else saw anything bad coming down the line.
Update Niki Kelly and Angela Mapes Turner have more for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. One interesting bit of information is that an IBM spokesperson says:
[T]he company had invested great amounts of money and resources in a process complicated by the severe recession, high unemployment and natural disasters that increased the number of people seeking help.
“IBM rejects the state’s claims and believes the state’s action is unjustified,” Buscemi said.
IBM would take action within the guidelines of the contract to stop its termination, Buscemi said, but declined to be provide specifics.
To date, the State has spent $361 million on this contract. I believe that’s a gross figure – to determine the impact on the state, I suppose you would want to figure out how much the state would have spent if the contract had never been pursued and also try to quantify how much worse the service was.
It’s interesting that the resources weren’t Mitch’s, the effort wasn’t Mitch’s, but the concept…
Glad that this contract is being cancelled, but why did it take so long? Remember how defensive Mitch Daniels was earlier in the year? He claimed that all or most of the problems were due to past welfare cheaters not being able to cheat anymore.
Also, call me overly skeptical, but I wonder if there is more to this story, such as pending sanctions from the federal government, possible lawsuits, etc.